OEM 13c : The Road Ahead

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c comes with a new array of features that emphasize high availability, integration with the cloud and easier management of enterprise stacks of all kinds throughout their lifecycles. These new features push the envelope on levels of centralized administration, incident management and instant clarity in IT infrastructures of all shapes and sizes.

One typical problem that arises during planned/unplanned maintenance windows is an increased risk of critical situations at one or more nodes of infrastructure going unattended. OEM 13c remedies this problem by introducing Always-On Monitoring, a feature that enables, via the Event Monitoring Service, continuous monitoring/reporting of critical events to continue even while Enterprise Manager is undergoing maintenance.

Another new feature is the Consolidation Workbench, which provides the appropriate tools and methodology to thoroughly plan, implement and analyze database consolidation operations. OEM 13c also further empowers administrators by migrating over some of the more important hardware management features from the Ops Center software. These features include OS management, photorealistic views of hardware components and a “single pane of glass” view of both application and hardware that is drillable and, thus, invaluable for troubleshooting in complex and varied IT infrastructure setups.

Engineered Systems from Oracle represents the zenith of integration, performance and durability. They may be described as the crown jewels of Oracle offerings. However, maintaining healthy stacks comprised of various nodes is not a simple matter, and one painstaking but crucial maintenance task is the patching of the various components of the Exalogic stack, including Infiniband and compute nodes. OEM 13c now ships with a comprehensive patching application that can systematically apply quarterly updates. The application ensures all pre-requisites for patches are met and that the component patches are applied in the appropriate order. Additionally, all patch execution logs are displayed within the application.

Other features provide better visibility for maintenance and security purposes. Specifically, the various components of Engineered Systems are explicitly represented inside the Enterprise Manager console by target type (servers, network, storage and VM). OEM 13c offers a new layer of Swiss-knife style security by enabling finely-grained access control that, for example, segregates application and database privileges. Exacheck, a tool that thoroughly audits Exalogic and Exadata configurations end-to-end, comes integrated by default with OEM 13c and can be automated to run when, how and on which machines you desire.

OEM 13c is a breath of fresh air for every system administrator and enterprise player who has longed for better integration, reliability and visibility around their infrastructure. Contact us for more information on how we can help you run and administer your IT assets by working with Enterprise Manager 13c.

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